These tales lurking under the surface are finally springing to the fore, jumping from the footnotes to the main text, making herstory. Id discovered a thriller, she wrote. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. The Kukielka family name was found in the USA in 1920. Tomorrow, Monday, Jews begin celebrating Sukkot, which commemorates the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which God protected them under difficult desert conditions. In 1943 when Kukielka and her comrades received news of the Warsaw ghettos armed uprising, they knew that deportation was imminent and their own resistance escalated. Credit: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem, Get email notification for articles from Adrian Hennigan. Photograph taken at a Gestapo Christmas party, 1941. With her fair complexion and mastery of Polish, Renia was able to disguise herself as a Christian and sent off separately. Instead, they stayed and fought them. He compiled this 585-page tome of Jews who organized large-scale rescue operations across Europe. Now, with the publication of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos, author Judy Batalion is revealing their remarkable lives. Discovering that Renia Kukielka, a truly courageous standout heroine of WWII, was also my cousin has awakened a new kind of resilience in me. Kaili out, Angel in: Is the EU Parliament starting afresh? She has talked to survivors and their children and grandchildren all over the world. I want people to know their legacy. Frumka Plotnicka died in combat against the Nazis, while Renia Kukielka and numerous other women acted as "messengers." She successfully ran multiple missions, smuggling weapons, correspondence and money from Bdzin to Warsaw until the Gestapo discovered her papers were forged and threw her into prison. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. In fact, I have never met one that says Hey, Im not really that good. Most salespeople just think that their natural ability is what it takes to sell. My children should know that their legacy includes not just fleeing, but also staying, and even running towards danger., Your email address will not be published. Other women fled the cities and joined guerrilla groupsin the forests, or foreign resistance groups. She felt weighed down by the womens accounts of being sexually assaulted by Nazis, of soldiers stomping on Jewish babies and of mass murder committed before their eyes. "I am a historian, I am a woman. Described by Batalion as a savvy, middle-class girl who When later histories were written, all too often the women tended to be depicted as passive, swept up in events rather than directing them. She almost set it aside, but the historian in her forced her to pick it up and examine it. This was the perfect cover for her to act as a courier for a rebel group from the Dror youth movement, smuggling news bulletins, money and weaponry across Nazi-occupied Poland. They fear that highlighting fighters makes the Holocaust look not that bad. They also fear that glorifying resisters places too much focus on agency, implying that survival was more than luck, judging those who did not take up arms and ultimately blaming the victim. A scholar who wrote a book about humor in the Holocaust wrote, If you want to write about humor in the Holocaust, the danger is that it seems like the Holocaust wasnt that bad. This resonated with me. Batalion, too, seeks to use culture and literature to reinvigorate the memory of the Jewish women resistance fighters. Thus, my research became double-layered: on the one hand, what is the story of Jewish women in the resistance; on the other hand, what happened to this story? Choose from the CJN's informative e-newsletters. Required fields are marked *. Through this painstaking work, she has managed to reconstruct a history that had been lost for decades in fact, one that has never been properly told: how Jewish women resisted the Nazi occupation in Poland. In Poland, where in the past years, the government has tried to shape the Holocaust narrative by law, stories from the war and resistance, in particular, have been emphasized or downplayed based on political allegiances with communists, Soviets, and Polish nationalists. The heroines, including Renia Kukielka, Tosia Altman, Chajka Klinger, Zivia Lubetkin, and others, so intrigued Batalion that she started researching their stories. Judy Batalionthe granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivorstakes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. She survived a tortuous journey through hidden bunkers in Slovakia, then on to Hungary, Turkey and the ultimate destination Palestine. More recently, in the U.S., where so many millennials dont know what Auschwitz is, and the memory of the genocide is fast fading, some people are hesitant to talk about armed Jewish resistance. I thought if they could get through the horrific challenges they faced, I can definitely get through this.. Batalion hopes the stories of female heroism she resurrected serve to inspire future generations of all faiths, especially her own two daughters, both in elementary school. On this day, women and men have come together in this building to make a momentous decision. Twenty-five years ago, I dont know how many women historians would be pitching to women agents and women editors who would have been supportive.". Theyre all talking about that day in 1942. Automatic approval of subscriber comments. She also unearthed the writings of Renia Kukielka, who penned her memoir in 1945, after escaping to Palestine. Renia Kukieka in Budapest, 1944. These were women who saw and acknowledged the truth, had the courage to act on their convictions and fought with their lives for what was fair and right, she said. In the larger context of the war, their victories were small and their sacrifices great. The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos, by Judy Batalion; William Morrow; 2021; $28.99. In 1920 there were 4 Kukielka families living in Michigan. Your IP: (JTA) They hid revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear. The authors research uncovered more incredible resistance stories than she ever could have imagined, but I wonder if she found any common traits among these young women to help explain their apparent fearlessness. Why have certain stories predominated our understanding while others have seemingly vanished? An abiding misconception of the second world war is that the Jews of Europe went passively to their deaths. The Light of Days conjures up many indelible images: women hiding razor blades in their hair; secret libraries and makeshift weapons labs being established in ghettos; female couriers donning layers of skirts to hide contraband in the folds; and young women determined not to go like sleep to the slaughter, to quote Jewish partisan leader Abba Kovners resistance mantra. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved, in light of its controversial, some would say revisionist, stance. What she uncovers, in excoriating and poignant detail, are the stories of the ghetto girls who paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and messages in their pigtails and fought in armed struggles. When caught, they would often be killed on the spot. Nothing stands in their way. Kukielkas story supplies the books narrative spine. Described by Batalion as a savvy, middle-class girl who happened to find herself in a sudden and unrelenting nightmare, she was just 15 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Slowly, however, their voices disappeared. Thats a huge number. The longest piece in Women in the Ghettos was a personal tale by Renia Kukielka, an 18-year-old who in 1943 smuggled weapons, cash, fake IDs, and people from Warsaw to the provincesshe became the central character in my book. This was a horrific genocide, and these were teenagers who tried to organize to overcome.. The hard work of so many women has paid off: The Light of Days is already a New York Times and international bestseller, director Steven Spielberg has optioned the film rights and there has beeninterest from documentary filmmakers and playwrights. Others in Bedzin included Frumka Plotnicka and her younger sister, Hantze. There is anotheryoung woman in the same room,Renia Kukielka. Low around 35F. Click to reveal Their stories seeped into my system: How Judy Batalion found the stories of overlooked female Polish WWII resistance fighters, The Samuel H. 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When Batalion read Renias memoir she felt as if shed discovered a kindred spirit a thoughtful writer processing her experiences. The chapters had titles like Ammunition and Partisan Battles, and in one part there was an ode to guns, she recalls. The Light of Days , with its more than 450 pages of narrative, hundreds of detailed footnotes, and These young people were outnumbered but many managed to escape. Many others operated as couriers, bringing news of Nazi atrocities to Polands 400-plus ghettos or smuggling in munitions, cash and even fighting spirit. Kukielka traveled across Poland smuggling weapons and messages; Hazan, who looked Aryan with her blond hair and fair complexion, disguised herself as a Polish nurse and provided food and medicine to forced laborers; Klinger was a leader in Hashomer Hatzair and helped organize their clandestine activities. For many years, memoirs and personal accounts were considered unreliable source material. Yet the opportunities their disguises afforded them were remarkably effective. The telling was in a sense the therapy, or part of the therapy, and then they had to move on. Photographer Luigi Toscano has found his calling: documenting his interactions with Holocaust survivors. I tried to piece together stories, and a lot of times the details did conflict what happened in one account isnt exactly the same as in another account. Amid overcrowded houses stands a special building:the heart of the Jewish youth organization Freiheit(English: freedom)and the headquarters of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. (Dror and other youth movements like Hashomer Hatzair became a de facto Jewish resistance network in the war.). Women are routinely dropped from stories in which they played key roles, their experiences blotted out of history, Batalion writes. One story that definitely needed to be told is that of Vitka Kempner, a partisan leader in Vilna, who had escaped through the bathroom window of her small towns synagogue to command fighters on the front line. "If we must die, then let us die together. One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fightersa group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Silence was a coping mechanism for many of these women. As a professor, Mildred Harnack especially favored teaching poorer students at the University of Berlin and drew on U.S. authors chronicling poverty to help them lift themselves up. As a 15 In 1943 when Kukielka and her comrades received news of the Warsaw ghettos armed uprising, they knew that deportation was imminent and their own resistance escalated. It was then that Kukielka became a Freedom courier, carrying cash to buy food, medicine, weapons, transporting bullets in innocuous jars of jam, or bribing guards and the police. There were a lot of balances to get right, Batalion notes. After Her older sister Sarah had moved away, becoming an activist in a secular Zionist organization. In 2007, while living in London, Batalion, then in her 20s, was researching Hannah Senesh, the young Jewish heroine of World War II who was executed by the Nazis. It was then that Kukielka became a Freedom courier, carrying cash to buy food, medicine, weapons, transporting bullets in innocuous jars of jam, or bribing guards and the police. Alexander Santora/For the Jersey Journal. Its very tricky to tell a story about the Holocaust, because I want to explain the deeply horrific nature of this genocide, but I also want to tell a story of the people that fought it. We have a responsibility to do all we can so that something like this will never happen again," she says. "I just hope this story gets told to as wide an audience as possible," she says. In fact there was fierce and sustained armed resistance operating from many of the ghettos, culminating in uprisings, as well as revolts in concentration and forced labour camps and a significant, if sometimes covert, Jewish presence in partisan armies. Renia Kukielka was, typically, neither an idealist nor a revolutionary but a savvy, middle-class girl who happened to find herself in a sudden and unrelenting nightmare. The resisters used homemade weapons and stole guns to ambush Nazis. All Rights Reserved. Batalion comes from a family of Polish-born Holocaust survivors and grew up in a tight-knit Jewish community in Montreal, but says much of her early life was an attempt to run away from that. Hence, she found herself in London, performing stand-up comedy and working in the art world, but with questions gnawing away about her Jewish heritage. Low around 35F. This is well-researched, multifaceted history, raising fascinating questions about the nature of agency, resistance and testimony. The Light of Days highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. They forget that this is a profession, and like any profession, it has rules, strategy, . In 1943, Niuta Teitelbaum, dressed as a Polish farm girl, walked into a Gestapo apartment and shot and killed two Nazis. Their families were exterminated, but they survived. She, along with scores of other brave young women who passed as Aryans, were the vital connecting links between the ghettos, bringing news, smuggling false identification papers, and at times weapons, concealed on their bodies or in sacks of food and even jars of marmalade. Including womens experiences helps us write a different story, one which has the potential to teach us new things about women, the Jewish people, and humanity.. Get the award-winning Cleveland Jewish News and our popular magazines delivered directly to you. Renia Kukielka sewed fake IDs into her skirts to save Jewish lives in German-occupied Poland. After this catharsis, Renia felt able to move on, to start afresh. Or Zivia Lubetkin, who was in her Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. The reasoning: feminists should not politicize the story. Politicians used Hannah Seneshs story to promote certain narratives of Israels historythis is one reason she became more well known. They upheld the idea that European Jews were weak and that the new Israeli Jew was strong, which helped build morale for a developing country. It was so not what I expected, and so foreign to the Holocaust narrative I had grown up with. My genes were stamped even altered, as neuroscientists now suggest by trauma, she writes in The Light of Days. I grew up in an aura of victimization and fear.. Others suffered debilitating survivors guilt. Theyre convinced that Germans will revolt against this lunatic politician, Donner writes. In 1943 when Kukielka and her comrades received news of the Warsaw ghettos armed uprising, they knew that deportation was imminent and their own resistance escalated. Should their leader, the Jewish-Polish woman Frumka Plotnicka, use these papers to travel to The Hague and represent the Jewish people before the International Criminal Court? Of history, raising fascinating questions about the nature of agency, resistance and testimony the main text making! 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